


Domine, salvum fac Reginam

by ofsevenseas



Series: Two Steps to the Left [1]
Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 06:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofsevenseas/pseuds/ofsevenseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas for the Holmes boys, in which things are stolen, acquaintances made, and minds changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domine, salvum fac Reginam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Disassembly_Rsn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disassembly_Rsn/gifts).



> Written for the 2012 winter Holmestice exchange.

_There is a memory Mycroft cherishes, deep in the maze he has built for himself, akin to Sherlock’s mind palace and yet infinitely more layered. It is one of the few he has left of Mummy, when she still smiled. He plucks that thought and inters it within ice, trusting to – well, not chance, to conceal it._

_In the silence of waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall upon the Queenkin, Mycroft chooses to indulge himself, perhaps for the last time._

At nine, Sherlock had been fractious and restless, certain that his senses were sufficient to withstand large crowds, and straining at the bit. For, he declared, there was only one museum of natural history worth visiting, and he was certainly not passing up the chance to see the new shoggoth exhibits before the uneducated masses sullied them with their mere presence.

Mummy had pursed her lips.

Of course, this was all inference, for Mycroft had been at Harrow, ignoring the pitched fervor of hormones and speculation – the Princess Beatrice had visited her cousin for term’s end – in favour of his ongoing project to secure a position at the Queen’s Palace.

It was said that the Princess Beatrice took after her great-grandfather Albert. All those who spoke to her remembered only her nut-brown hair and gentle smile, and not the content of their conversations. He saw for himself: but for the opalescent shimmering of her eyes, the Princess Royal was as human as the next student. It was all the more impressive, then, that she had managed to survive to become her Imperial ancestress’s mainstay, among all the uncanny might of the greater Queenkin.

_Mycroft is aware, that is a well-worn path through his mind, and leaves the hallway to follow for another day; he has no reason to distract himself now._

Knowing that he had very little time left to spend his life as he wished, Mycroft persuaded Mummy to shift the household to London for Christmas, bringing himself to compromise with Sherlock for an entire day at the V&A in exchange for the Museum of Natural History. (For, of course, his brother’s monomaniacal focus on the natural sciences would one day leave him crippled in his pursuits.)

So it was that he found himself walking alone, ostensibly shepherding Sherlock to his beloved museum, musing on the duty of care one’s monarchs owed, if they were ravening eldritch beasts from outer space. Surely that excused them from behaving with decorum?

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Sherlock’s messy black mop moving along a clipping pace straight into a nearby yew bush, easily overtaking a pale blond head almost half a foot shorter. Mycroft sighed, and resigned himself to pulling indignant, insulted children and adults alike away from his brother. As he strode toward the milling mass of humanity, minds all a-hum with atonal surges of emotion, Mycroft followed the quartal strike of Sherlock’s mind: a quicksilver dart above the human children. Close to Sherlock, Mycroft felt a slow basso of anticipatory dread, not Sherlock’s, and followed its blooming into a surprisingly vibrant dyad of discovery through the park.

He passed a group of vigilantly guarded children, whose parents had not seen fit to accompany them to the park but had spared no apparent expense in keeping them from child snatchers. Their nannies dismissed him almost in unison as a nicely bred boy, too bright-eyed and well dressed to be one of the thralls.

Idly, still tracking Sherlock and his mirror-bright companion above the din of the crowd through central London, Mycroft wondered if the human population would hold up to the continued depredations of their great sovereigns, if perhaps certain externalities lurked to synergize themselves with the decreased birth rate. Mycroft was not afraid of the eventualities, he and Sherlock and Mummy had unique defenses, diluted as they were, but nine hundred years was a long time, and perhaps they have truly, in common parlance, ‘gone native’.

_Mycroft casts his mind out to the echoing corridors of their ancestral home, and the dying traces of Sherlock ripple out, plucking against his senses. He opens his eyes to the open file on the dining table, detailing the recovery of Moriarty’s remains and a conclusive ruling to the death of Rache, alias Sherry Vernet, alias Sigerson._

The twinned stone towers of the Natural History Museum rose above him, the chilly winter sun casting an oddly pink tone over the stone. At fifteen, Mycroft was perfectly able to assess the history of the structure standing before him. It took a particular sense of humour to appreciate its confiscation from a prominent dissenter of the crown in order to dedicate a permanent display to the Queen’s superior place in all possible domains.

Natural history being, of course, a proclamation of the natural ascent of the Old Ones to bring peace and prosperity to all.

Mycroft circled around the exterior, the press of dead things against his senses unsullied by the layers of stone between them. At this hour of morning, the massive building was deserted, a few sparks of human presence here and there, separated by the numbing buzz of guard thralls stationed at regular intervals throughout its cold stone halls. He avoided moving against them as much as he could, while he followed Sherlock’s progress through the different exhibits.

He still remembered everything from his own visit with the rest of the First Formers. Sherlock was unmoved by the mineral specimens laid out under glass, nor the Aurora Pyramid of Hope. His mind remained its usual even-keeled hurricane as he strode through the massive circular mural of the Old Ones rising from the sea, though the lunar glow of the child beside him would occasionally tug him back to an exhibit.

By now thoroughly irritated and frozen, Mycroft contemplated leaving his brother to the tender mercies of the Darwinian Heresy Room while he tested his range. He particularly wanted to try casting his mind over to the monkeys at Whitehall, though their current state of panic at grain shortages would probably not yield desirable results. Though not thralls in nature, they were little better endowed with the graces of human intelligence. Besides, the miasmic presence of Kensington Palace loomed closer against his boundaries. It would be something of the ultimate test, to pit himself against the Queen.

A shower of excited arpeggios from Sherlock forestalled Mycroft. Not today, then.

He felt Sherlock run headlong into the Leviathan exhibit, next to which the new shoggoth specimen was housed. The young child, a touch older than Sherlock, was suppressing his own panic and excitement quite well. Mycroft knew more than felt that he was grounding Sherlock out of some instinctive desire to protect, and consigned the rest of his energy to fending off the guard thralls converging on the Darwinian Heresy Room.

He registered a distant shock in Sherlock’s mind, before he suddenly shifted and Mycroft was forced to support himself against a street lamp. He imagined that were he the earth, a shattering change in magnetic axes would generate the same sensations currently pounding in his skull.

When he came to himself again, he could feel snow clumping on his eyelashes and smell it in the air swirling around himself. Mycroft opened his eyes into a blizzard, resolving to have a word with Sherlock for flagrantly abusing his Other gifts.

In the minutes it took to get his limbs back into working order, Mycroft decided that he would instead upend every single one of Sherlock’s experiments in the old stable.

_So close to sunset, Mycroft could not help himself from wandering, a lifetime’s worth of discipline crumbling under the iron weight of his grief. A lifetime spent to protect, failing at the last, against a waterfall far from the banks of the river in which he’d seen the shape of the future. A door opens, slowly, in his mind._

_Sherlock’s companions had awaited him in the tunnel, no longer content to take orders. He had tapped his umbrella against the ground twice, the only sign of grief he had permitted himself. “What do you propose to do? Your names and faces are known. Even allowing for Irene’s remarkable abilities, you cannot hope to win against the might of Albion.” John had stood his ground and said, “Not if we strike at her heart.”_

As coincidence would have it, Mycroft very literally walked into Sherlock on the way home. Aware that even in the midst of howling winter eavesdroppers abounded, he gritted his teeth and remained silent.

The door just barely muffled the shrieks of the storm still raging outside. Before Sherlock squelched further into the house in stocking feet – Mycroft took a petty sort of satisfaction that at least he was not immune to the very effects he himself wrought – he took a firm hold of Sherlock’s wool-clad shoulder and asked him to go up to his room first.

Sherlock turned limpid grey eyes up at him, “But I still have a proof to finish for my maths tutor, Mycroft. Surely you won’t advise me to neglect my studies?”

Thoroughly unimpressed, Mycroft merely looked at Sherlock and let his own annoyance twinge discordantly against the purposefully blank slate of Sherlock’s consciousness.

“Don’t be a bully, Mycroft.” Sherlock’s eyelids flickered, conceding the upper hand for this round.

He drew himself tightly away. “Sherlock, remember that I am not a dull-witted guard thrall. You caused this storm. What were you hoping to accomplish?”

Mouth set mulishly, Sherlock shot back, “At least I didn’t stay in my head like a petrified turtle! ‘You have abundant gifts, Sherlock,’” he mimicked, “‘Do not waste them idly’.”

“Your natural talents, Sherlock, are not the fraction of your true intellect. You know this.” Satisfaction curled itself around Sherlock’s mouth. Mycroft could see that he’d stumbled into the trap of a familiar argument. And oh, how it had sprung.

“Do you think this snowstorm a minor legacy of the first Holmes, Mycroft?”

He made an effort to be mild, and replied, “I can only sense the tantrum of a spoiled child, Sherlock. It’s time you grew up.”

Abruptly, the white noise around the house slowed to a gentle swirl. “And now?” Sherlock almost swayed, in the grips of his own triumph or exhaustion, but managed to stay upright through sheer force of will.

Mycroft looked at the sudden high colour in Sherlock’s cheeks and raised his eyebrows. “An enhancer, then. Was your enthusiasm for the giant shoggoth only a blind?”

Sherlock smirked, and turned to go up the stairs.

Watching the his rapid progress on the polished steps despite wet socks, Mycroft hoped that his brother had had the sense to hide it well, and went in search of his father’s diaries. Above the wooden staircase, the family crest read: _Alea jacta est_.

_“Reports of the Princess Royal’s current location should be directed to the Queen’s Palace. Her Imperial Majesty’s chancellor is urging caution and prudence in the face of increased Restorationist attacks, and adds that though they are presently daunting, the public has nothing to fear. As ever, long live the queen!”_

Even crouched possessively over his contraband first edition of Principia Mathematica, Sherlock still managed to radiate a complete aura of ennui. Mycroft smiled down at his own present, but Sherlock still gave him a disdainful look over his untouched plate of roast that said, quite plainly, “You cannot hope to aspire to my brilliance.”

“My dear Sherry,” Mycroft nodded to the general direction of Kensington Palace, “I assure you, there is no need to _aspire_.”

Deftly buttering a roll in defiance of Sherlock’s disparaging declarations on sustenance, Mummy smiled brightly around the dining table, “Well! I thought I’d take you both back home for a proper Christmas after all, before you join forces and dismantle the kingdom, my brilliant darlings. Get your things ready tonight, we leave first thing tomorrow.”

As Sherlock began his inevitable snit, Mycroft stared up into his father’s 17th century Blaeu and planned.

Kingdoms rose and fell on the strength of men’s convictions.

_Vivat Victoria Gloriana._


End file.
